12 useful Photoshop shortcuts you probably don’t know

Photoshop shortcuts speed up our workflow without any doubt. But there are so many of them, that most of us probably don’t know them all. Jesús Ramirez from Photoshop Training Channel shares twelve very useful shortcuts in his latest video. You may know some of them, but I’m sure you’ll learn something new and speed up your post-processing work even more.

1. Redo the last selection

Create the selection and adjust it as you like. Press Ctrl/Cmd +D to deselect and work on the rest of the photo. Now, if you don’t want to waste your time to create the selection again, press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + D to bring back the last active selection, so you can work within it again.

2. Lock transparent pixels

Select the Brush tool and choose the color you want. Create a new layer and paint with this color. Now, if you want to add any adjustments to this area without affecting the transparent pixels, press the forward slash (/) key and start making the adjustments. Now the adjustments will be applied only to the opaque pixels, and the transparent ones will be locked. To undo this, just press the same key again.

3. Turn Brush size preview on/off

If it happens that your Brush tool doesn’t have the size preview, press Caps Lock key and you’ll bring it back. Jesus admits this gave him so much trouble when he first faced it, that he thought his Photoshop was broken when he saw the brush size preview was missing. So if this happens, remember that the solution is simple.

4. Fit to screen

If you want to fit the image to screen, press Ctrl/Cmd + 0. You can also use this when you are transforming an object, and you can’t see the corner handles. When you hit Ctrl/Cmd + 0, you will be able to see them. Also, pressing Ctrl/Cmd + 1 zooms to 100%.

5. Toggle the canvas color

If you want to toggle between canvas colors, hit Spacebar + F. If you want to toggle to the opposite direction, press Shift + Spacebar + F.

6. The feather selection

If you have made the selection and want to add the feather to it, press Shift + F6. This brings up the feather selection window so you can enter the feather radius.

7. Spring-loaded keyboard shortcut

While you’re using a tool (let’s say it’s Burn Tool), you may need to rotate the image. If you hold R key and click and drag to rotate, when you release the mouse and the R key, Photoshop will stay at the Rotate Tool. The trick to automatically get back to the Burn Tool is this: when you’re done zooming/rotating, release the mouse first and then release the keyboard key. This way Photoshop will bring you back to the tool you were using before, in this case, the Burn Tool.

8. Repeat the last transformations

This shortcut is useful for creating a design where you’ll fill something around the circle (like a watch). Press Ctrl/Cmd + H to bring back the hidden guides Press Ctrl/Cmd + T to transform the object you want to duplicate and move the pivot point to the center of the large circle. Change the rotation to the angle you want, press Enter, and this will move the object to the position you chose.

Now, when you want to duplicate this object and keep the same angle of rotation, press Ctrl/Cmd + Alt/Option + Shift + T. Press it as many times as you want to duplicate the subject.

9. Canceling the tool

If you select the tool or enter a window you don’t want, just press the Esc key to get out of it.

10. Turn hyphenation on/off

When you create a text box and add text to it, you may have the hyphens when words continue in the next row. To get rid of them, press Ctrl/Cmd + A to select the entire text, and then press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Alt/Option + H.

11. Hide all visible layers

Hold Alt/Option key and click on the eye icon of the layer to hide all layers except the one you clicked on. To bring them back, just repeat the process.

12. Revert

If you’ve made too many mistakes and want to start over, you can revert the image by pressing the F12 key.

So, which of these shortcuts were new to you? Or perhaps you already knew all of them? Are there any other useful, but less known shortcuts you use regularly? Feel free to share them in the comments below.

Clinton Lofthouse is a Photographer, Retoucher and Digital Artist based in the United Kingdom, who specialises in creative retouching and composites. Proud 80's baby, reader of graphic novels and movie geek!
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